USA Today Says USDA Should Allow U.S. Ranchers to Test All Beef for Mad Cow

USA TODAY
March 26, 2004
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-03-25-our-view-usat_x.htm

Editorial: Beef firm faces perplexing resistance to mad cow tests
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef is a small producer of high-quality beef in
Kansas. But it's making a big point about mad cow disease. It wants to
privately test all of the cattle it slaughters for the illness, which can
cause a fatal brain disease in humans who eat infected meat. The way
Creekstone Farms sees it, 100% testing would reassure U.S customers. The
company also says it is talking with Japan about restarting exports there,
where total testing is required.

But the firm has run into surprising obstacles: from the federal government,
which has pledged to do everything possible to detect the disease, and from
the meat industry, which has scrambled to keep consumer confidence since
December. That's when the first U.S. case of mad cow was found in a
Washington cow imported from Canada.

Their reasoning is as confounding as government foot-dragging over approving
private testing. And it ill-serves confused customers who are looking for
stronger assurances that the meat they buy is safe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently does not allow such
private testing for mad cow disease. And it claims that a new government
testing system it approved this month is perfectly adequate. More than 10
times the number of cattle will be tested for mad cow under the new system,
but the government still will be testing less than 1% of the 37 million
cattle slaughtered in the U.S. each year. That falls far short of the 100%
testing Creekstone Farms is proposing and Japan provides.

Other beef producers complain that Creekstone Farms' 100% testing plans
would set an expensive precedent. They worry that consumers might be misled
into thinking an untested cut of beef isn't safe. But food producers
ranging from organic growers to free-range farmers already market their
products based on the idea that food produced in healthier ways or with
added safeguards is worth paying for. Creekstone Farms' proposal taps into
the same logic.

Rather than blocks on private efforts to strengthen beef testing, what's
really needed are tougher test regimens for all U.S. cattle. U.S. consumer
advocates say this requires testing all cattle over 20 months, since current
tests can't detect the long-incubating disease in younger cattle.

In contrast, the new U.S. system will test up to 268,000 cattle over a
period of 18 months, including all that appear sick plus a random sample of
about 20,000 others.

Americans are willing to fund a higher level of reassurance. A January poll
by the Consumers Union showed that 95% of adults would pay 10 cents more a
pound for tested beef. Testing every slaughtered cow would cost about six
cents per pound.

Scientists are developing promising, inexpensive mad cow tests, including a
simple blood test. Until they are perfected, letting Creekstone Farms carry
out full testing under USDA oversight not only seems reasonable, it also
could provide an important measure of the usefulness of 100% testing.
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